Dilma's visit

• The Wall Street Journal on the visit of the Brazilian President to Cuba, and Brazil’s stronger role in regional affairs.

• Bloomberg: Yoani Sanchez saw herself in Dilma, and was disappointed in Dilma.

• AFP: Brazil’s Odebrecht announced a 10-year agreement to work on sugar production and milling in Camaguey.

• At Diario de Cuba, a worry from Los Angeles that Brazil’s engagement is supporting the “Chinese model.”  I don’t know that Brazil is supporting any political model in Cuba, but it is trying to assist in economic reform and improvement.  My guess is that the Brazilian government would say that Cuba’s politics should be decided by Cubans.

Odds and ends

• MSNBC: Miami-Dade delivered big for Romney in Tuesday’s GOP primary.

• From the publication Insight Crime, a note on U.S.-Cuba drug enforcement cooperation.

• AP: Cuba’s trade with Venezuela up, with United States down in 2010.

Pope Benedict's visit

Catholic Information Service reports that Pope Benedict’s program in Cuba will be as follows:

March 26: 2:00 p.m. arrival in Santiago; 5:00 p.m. mass commemorating the 400^th anniversary of the Virgin of Charity.

March 27: Visit to el Cobre; travel to Havana; afternoon courtesy call on President Raul Castro; dinner with Cuba’s bishops.

March 28: Mass in the Plaza de la Revolucion; departure for Rome.

The party conference

Cuba’s Communist Party met over the weekend and decided that top party and government officials will be limited to two five-year terms, which would have put Fidel and Raul Castro themselves into retirement decades ago.

If you are among who might have been anticipating major political reforms or even the dismantling of the socialist system, Raul Castro’s message is that you are confusing your “most intimate hopes with reality.” Clear enough.

The President and party chief also made a frank admission that the party and government do not have a cohort of new leadership ready to take over from his own generation of historicos. But the only decision I see to address this is to replace one fifth of the Central Committee’s membership over the next five years, which sounds like a pace that is only marginally quicker than natural attrition.

His discussion of corruption happened to put U.S. democracy promotion programs into perspective. He said that corruption is “far more damaging than the programs of subversion and interference of the United States government.” He also signaled that major corruption prosecutions are forthcoming, and that legislators have been briefed on the results of investigations that are soon to come to light.

Here’s coverage from the Herald and La Jornada.

Odds and ends

· More on the case of deceased prisoner Wilman Villar: His widow appeared at a press conference at the home of human rights monitor Elizardo Sanchez and said that Villar’s legal troubles began in a domestic dispute between the couple where he had been drinking, and things ended with her mother going for police assistance. After that, she said, Villar joined a dissident group. She has now joined the Damas de Blanco. There is a lot more back-and-forth among family members and others about who hit or did not hit whom, and more. Sanchez says that this is a moment where “the truth has to be brought to light” because either the government or the dissidents “are lying.” See stories from AP and AFP Spanish.

· The Herald takes an interesting look at the evolution of church-state relations in Cuba since the 1980’s.

· Cuba flights are about to begin from Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

· New Times, the Miami weekly that is really one of the best newspapers in America, gave me honorable mention in a recent blog ranking for being the “only blogger in Miami reporting on the Cuban economy.”

· In the comments, a reader pointed out an essay by Cuban blogger Ivan Garcia on Fidel Castro’s experiments and failures over the years. It’s here in English and Spanish. Not to be pigeonholed, he is also in favor of taking Bush, Blair, and Aznar to the Hague for starting the Iraq war (here and here).

Foreign investment in sugar sector

Reuters reports that the Brazilian corporation Odebrecht is going to enter Cuba’s sugar sector with a 10-year contract to operate and modernize a mill in Camaguey. An executive said the company will also build a distillery to produce ethanol.

Ethanol production itself is a breakthrough, as is the entry of foreign capital into sugar production itself.

This appears to deliver on the commitment made last April to admit more foreign investment in Cuba by making Cuba’s selection criteria broader and more flexible.

The announcement could come during the Brazilian president’s visit. More on that here.